Alerting

1. The Laws of Duplicate Bridge (Law 40) require you to inform your opposition of all your partnership understandings.  Most clubs, and certainly all higher-level clubs, would ensure this through mandating that all players have fully completed ‘System Cards’.  Currently, at Wotton Bridge Club, we do not enforce this.  We also have not yet implemented the EBU rules on “Announcing and Alerting”.
2. It is implicitly assumed that everybody at Wotton Bridge Club plays ‘Standard Acol’, though many have add-on extras, and some minor deviations.  The fundamental premise of Acol, however, is that all bids are natural unless otherwise indicated.  The mechanism for informing your opponents that a bid made by your partner is either a ‘convention’ bid or has a potentially unexpected meaning is to show the Alert card to both your opponents.
3. If you do show the Alert card and an explanation is requested by the opponent whose turn it is to bid then you are required to explain, fully, the meaning of your partner’s bid according to your partnership agreement.  If you do not know, or have forgotten, say so.  You must NOT explain how you intend to interpret it – that would potentially provide your partner with unauthorised information.  If the explanation you give is incorrect, your partner must not correct you, until after the bidding has finished and you or your partner ends up as Declarer.  You must not, however, give an explanation unless asked to do so by an opponent.
4. If it is your turn to bid, and either opponent has made a bid which was Alerted, or which you believe might not be natural or might have a special meaning (but was not Alerted), you are entitled to ask either opponent what their respective partner’s bid meant.  Do not ask a ‘leading’ question; simply ask what the bid meant.  You are entitled to ask for further clarification if the initial response is unclear.
5. Note that bids at the 4-level and above should not be alerted, except for either lead-directing Calls or an artificial bid on the first round, eg a 'splinter' bid.
6. At the end of the bidding process, if you are on lead, you may ask either/both opponents what their respective partner’s bids meant before selecting a card to lead – your choice might be influenced by their answer(s).  Once you are happy that you understand the opponents’ bidding select your card to lead and place it face-down on the table.  Your partner may now ask questions, but not until the lead card has been selected.  You may not then change your lead.